by Nan Ryan
Elizabeth started to call to him, to ask him to stay there through the night. She didn’t do it. There was no need. Instinctively she knew that the huge Navajo would watch over her until morning.
Yawning sleepily, the tension already leaving her body, she crawled back to her bed, stretched out, and sighed in the darkness. She was safe, totally safe. Lying on her back, she could feel her legs and arms growing limp, her eyelids getting heavy.
Sleep very close now, she recalled the way West Quarternight had looked sleeping in the sun like some big, lazy cat. The vision brought a smile to her lips. But the smile was quickly chased away by a frown of guilt, and she turned her thoughts to her husband.
Focusing on Dane, she wondered if he were lying in the darkness somewhere wondering about her. Was he alone and afraid down in some dark, cold cavern? Was he in misery, perhaps badly hurt? Was he helpless and lost, the sunny smile she remembered forever gone from his handsome face?
A tiny muscle twitching at the left corner of her full mouth, Elizabeth murmured softly, “My husband. My poor husband.”
24
“MY MASTER,” THE WOMAN softly murmured, “my pale master.”
His long black cape billowing out about him, the Master of the Depths stole silently across the chill stone floor toward his waiting female subject.
With his pearly translucent skin and enormous emerald eyes and long curling hair of spun gold, he was an ethereal, not-of-this-world being. A fair golden god to be worshiped and revered.
And feared.
Underneath the long ebony cape with its flanged shoulders and slits for arms, the golden-haired master’s tall, lean body was as white as milk. He purposely kept it that way. Had his faithful minions spend long hours dutifully sponging his long, slim frame with various concoctions of lemon juice and cultured buttermilk and expensive bleaching creams favored by pampered belles of the Old South.
And he stayed out of the sun.
As graceful as a ballerina, as beautiful as Michelangelo’s “David,” as compelling as the world’s most powerful rulers, the pale master stopped when he stood directly before his waiting vassal.
She was a Mexican woman—a girl really—of seventeen years. She lay upon a bed with her long, dark hair fanned out around her head. She was naked and her bare breasts, even as she lay flat, pointed proudly out from her chest, the large satiny nipples an appealing shade of wine. A fleshy girl, her belly was rounded and her thighs were plump and strong. Between them a forest of thick, dark hair was beaded with the perspiration of excitement.
And fear.
The bed on which the pretty young woman lay naked was not soft. It was not comfortable. It was not fashioned of downy feathers that gently cradled her luscious brown curves. The same height and shape of a regular bed, this one was unique. Unlike any bed in the world.
It was made of pure gold.
Blocks of smooth, hard gold had been meticulously stacked together. Dozens and dozens of heavy, precious gold ingots had been carried from other chambers to this, the pale master’s enormous amphitheater with its high-domed ceiling and its natural half-oval-shaped stage.
A stage where the golden bed was positioned directly before footlights of burning pine torches. Beyond those smoking torches was a congregation of nothing but thick blackness—a vast chasm of darkness. A deep, bottomless pit that led straight to the stygian depths of hell.
The golden ruler of those depths moved gracefully toward the dark-haired naked woman whose brown satin body shimmered in the footlights. She lay prostrate and submissive upon the bed of glittering gold. A lovely offering placed on a golden altar to glorify her god. A human sacrifice to appease her jealous master. A gift of flesh and blood to satiate his satyr’s hungers.
From the flaming torches located high up on the stone walls, flickering light cast shadows throughout the large eerie chamber. It was reflected in the golden blocks of the large bed and in the pale master’s feral eyes.
When the tall, gold-haired master stood at the very foot of the golden bed, he lifted his artistic hands to the stand-up collar of his black cape. With his eyes on the supine woman, he unclasped the lone hook, pulled the long cape apart, and let it slowly slither down his bare white body.
The supple cape whispered to the stone floor and pooled into a puddle of inky blackness around his bare feet. He stood in the torchlight, a golden, naked Adonis, allowing his lowly servant to adore his pale, godlike beauty. The grateful woman did just that.
Her dark eyes slowly moved from the glowing halo of golden curls adorning his handsome head, down to his wide white shoulders and to his broad chest where an appealing fanlike pattern of golden hair shimmered in the footlights. His leanly muscled arms and legs were long and beautifully shaped. His belly was flat and hard, and lower, from a glistening growth of golden curls rose his proud, precious instrument of sovereign power. That great throbbing staff of pain and pleasure. The glorious rod, magnificent provider of love and life.
And death.
The woman’s sensuous mouth softened, the glistening tip of her tongue emerged and slid slowly across her full upper lip. She got up onto her knees and slowly, seductively edged toward her master, her full naked breasts swaying erotically with her every movement.
When the brown-skinned woman reached the edge of the golden bed, she sat back on her heels before her pale master. He lifted his bare white arms, placed his long, pale fingers on either side of her head. Holding her in the tight vise of his grip, his eyes gleamed demonically.
His low, modulated voice echoing off the walls of the cavernous amphitheater, he said, “I am the devil come to do the devil’s work. You will obey me or I will loose from their world of darkness the winged demons and devils. I will call them forth from the dark shadows of their buried haunts, to slither like predatory beasts and stalk you, their helpless prey. Do you understand?”
“Yes, Pale Master.” The woman was mesmerized by those glittering green eyes.
“And when they have finished with you,” he went on in a low, murderous voice, “I will adjure the gods of the netherworld to damn your soul to roam in the scorching desert after death. Forever and ever.”
“Yes, Master.”
He smiled down at her. “You may kiss the staff of life.”
“Oh, thank you, Pale Master,” she said.
He released his deathlike grip on her head. She promptly bowed it and touched her worshiping lips and tongue to the smooth, hot tip of his pulsing masculinity.
For the next two hours the pale master and his dark subject, writhing about on that hard bed of gold, engaged in an erotic sexual performance for an audience of total blackness beyond the burning footlights. When the heated exhibition finally ended and the invisible curtain rang down, the dark-skinned subject, her voluptuous body shiny wet with the sweat of sex, lay limp and unmoving upon the bed of gold.
Her damp tangled hair fell away from her gleaming throat to reveal a set of blood marks midway down the left side of her neck. Without looking, the woman knew the marks were there. She was proud of them.
She would wear them like a badge of honor, would touch the tender flesh again and again when she was alone. And when she touched those marks that grew redder and deeper with each glorious encounter on the bed of gold, she would smile and recall the love and ecstasy that had come with them. She would run her fingers lovingly over the distinct pattern and flush with excitement remembering what had made them.
The master’s teeth.
Swirling the long black cape back around his bare white body, the pale master strode from the theater, leaving the woman lying on the bed of gold, alone on the deserted stage.
Outside the spacious chamber, two lackeys waited.
Paco, a slim-hipped Mexican of medium height had small beady eyes, a big nose, and a pencil-thin mustache above a hard, slashing mouth. He stepped forward to strip the black cape from his leader’s tall frame. The other man was Ortiz, a short, overweight Mexican with a badly crossed walleye,
which he could not control. The bulging white cornea roamed at will and Ortiz had been whipped by his pale master more than once for daring to look upon the master’s woman. His tearful explanations that he hadn’t known he was looking fell on deaf ears.
Ortiz lifted a clean, dampened cloth and sponged away the woman’s scent from his master’s body. The master turned back to Paco, who held out a pair of trousers for the tall, pale man to step into. When the pants had been pulled up over his hips and the fly loosely laced, the blond master gave the two obedient thralls orders to rouse the spent Mexican woman, clean her up, and get her back to her own small, dark chamber.
After that, they were to get back to work hauling the heavy ingots of shiny yellow gold up through the miles of darkened corridors and narrow tunnels and perilous stone catwalks.
While the two Mexican lackeys hurried forth to do his bidding, the pale master raked his long white fingers through his damp halo of golden curls, turned, and strode unhurriedly away.
Toward the deep shadows he moved with a quiet, deadly assurance. From the beckoning darkness came a low but persistent noise that started as a whisper. The whisper grew into a mighty roar as the pale master was swallowed up in the impenetrable blackness.
It had been three days, but it seemed more like three weeks.
At first Elizabeth had been genuinely bewitched by some of the most spectacular mountain and desert scenery in the west, country so remote it had changed little since Coronado had come in search of the Seven Cites of Cibola.
The bloodred arroyos slicing through the land, the green of the thick mesquites, and the distant blue mountains were a wondrous sight. The sunsets were unlike any she had ever witnessed, and just last evening she had stood on the edge of an escarpment, staring into the dying sun, mesmerized by the huge fiery ball on the western horizon and by the changing hues of the painted sky.
At first the sky was a bright, blood red, almost frightening in scope and color. Then swiftly the skyline lightened into a hot, vibrant pink. Next came a breathtaking shade of shy violet, the effect so sweetly beautiful, it caused an ache in Elizabeth’s breast.
She stood unmoving, knowing the perfect peace shed by the violet sky would only last for a few precious minutes. She experienced those lovely, fleeting moments, drawing all the priceless pleasure she could squeeze from them.
And then, like all perfect things, the shy violet quickly darkened to a deep, foreboding purple. Elizabeth shivered involuntarily. She was suddenly struck with that feeling that someone was walking over her grave. She hugged herself and stayed where she was until the deep purple became a midnight blue and only a pale gloaming of light remained.
It was gone in an instant and pervasive darkness enclosed her. She sighed and hurried down the stone steps she had climbed to her high lookout.
Now, at midafternoon, as she bumped along atop the buck wagon, she found no magic in her surroundings, no thrill in studying the varied statues of sandstone dotting the Rio Grande valley.
But she could see what she hoped was the blue outline of Sandia Crest in the distance. If it was Sandia Crest, then they were nearing Albuquerque. As much as she hated even to speak to the man seated beside her, she was too curious to keep quiet.
Not looking at him, she said, “Correct me if I’m wrong. We are facing southwest, aren’t we? I’m trying to locate Sandia Crest.”
“Is that damned thing lost again?”
“You’re not one bit funny, West Quarternight!” Elizabeth turned to face him. “I want to know if that is Sandia crest!”
“Why, I do believe it is.”
“Will we get there by nightfall? Will we spend the night in Albuquerque?” Elizabeth held her breath.
“Nope.”
She made no attempt to hide her disappointment. “You planned it this way, didn’t you! You purposely let us take a longer lunch rest than usual so that we couldn’t get to Albuquerque tonight.”
His lanky body draped back in the seat, a long arm behind her on the seat back, a booted foot lifted and riding the splashboard, West said conversationally, “Since you’re absolutely unbeatable at figuring things out, maybe you’ll tell me why I would do a thing like that.”
“Because you really are a complete and total bastard,” she was quick to answer.
He shot her an amused glance. “Practice makes perfect.”
She huffed, crossed her arms over her chest, and refused to say anything more. There was no getting a straight answer from him. His biggest joy in life was to tease and torture her.
Her jaw hard, Elizabeth stared straight ahead, deciding that she didn’t like any of their hired guides. When Grady Downs drove the buck wagon, he talked and talked until she sometimes felt her head was rattling. Big Taos was just the opposite, he never uttered a word, but it seemed like every time she turned around she was bumping into the big giant. It unnerved her.
But worst of all was the man seated beside her, whose full lips had gone slack in derision of her anger. She felt his gray eyes on her, glinting with contemptuous amusement. Never had she known a man with so much relentless audacity. She wondered if anything was sacred to him. He made fun of everything.
She hated it when he took a turn driving the wagon. He knew he had her then, that she couldn’t get away. Knew he could say anything that was on his mind, and that’s just what he did. He took perverse glee in bringing up things that had happened the night they had spent together in the Louisiana stockade.
He said things aloud that most people hardly dared to think. He brought up shared intimacies, and she was absolutely astounded. Both by the fact that he could look right at her and say such forbidden things, and by the fact that he had remembered them after all this time. She had supposed that she was the only one who remembered, the only one who had guiltily relived those memories time and again in the darkness in her lonely bed.
Elizabeth came back to herself when West’s booted foot left the splashboard and he casually tossed the reins across her lap. Automatically taking up the long leather reins, she turned questioning eyes on him.
With an economy of motion, he reached a long arm behind his head, wrapped tanned fingers around his collar, and drew his shirt over his head. He wadded up the pale blue cotton slipover shirt and tossed it behind the seat. Looking straight at Elizabeth, he lazily scratched his hair-covered chest and said, “It’s a little hot out this afternoon. You don’t mind, do you?”
“Would it matter if I did?”
Sun glinting on his sleek muscles, West reached out, wrapped his fingers around her left elbow, lifted her arm a little, and looked accusingly at the hint of dampness circling her pale yellow long-sleeved blouse.
“Looks like you’re a little warm yourself.”
Shaking his hand off, Elizabeth slapped at his chest with the reins, and snapped, “It’s a hundred degrees, or hadn’t you noticed!”
“I have,” he said. “Too damned hot to wear clothes. Why don’t you slip out of your blouse.”
“Not on your life.”
“Don’t tell me you don’t trust me.”
“I’m sure your feelings are hurt that I don’t.”
West deliberately leaned closer to Elizabeth. He placed his hand over his heart. “Gets me right here.”
“Oh, I’d like to get you right … right …” She realized her eyes had fallen to the straining crotch of his tight buckskins. Her head shot up, her fair face flushed with color, and she twisted away from him, tossing the reins over his sprawled knee.
“You do, sweetheart,” he told her. “You get me there most of all.”
25
THE WESTERING SUN GLARED on the water where the Rio Grande took a slight bend eastward. Shading her eyes against the harsh reflection, Elizabeth looked out at the river and felt her exasperation grow. Behind her, the towering peak of Sandia Crest loomed close and majestic against the deep blue sky. A few low, scattered clouds cast long dark shadows on its sunny slopes.
It was a good two hours until
sundown and Albuquerque was only seven miles to the south. As far as she was concerned, there was no good reason why they couldn’t have ridden on in and spent the night in comfort. She had loudly voiced that opinion to West Quarternight when he had announced they were stopping and would camp here for the night.
“Stopping?” She had grabbed his bare forearm. “Why on earth would we stop? It’s the middle of the afternoon, for heaven’s sake. You told me yourself that when we reached Sandia Crest we’d be just seven miles out of Albuquerque. No one’s tired. Not even the horses. Let’s go on into town where we can check into a hotel and have some decent food. I badly need a bath—a real bath—and wouldn’t it be nice to sleep in a soft bed with fresh sheets and … and … You’re not listening to me!”
“What was that you said?” He finally turned to look at her, grinning like a wicked cherub.
“Oh, you!” She gave the hair on his arm a painful twist and wondered if anyone ever got through to the indifferent, pig-headed bastard. She doubted it.
Now, standing mute and angry on the riverbank, she paid little attention to all the activity going on around her as the men went about the ritual of setting up camp for the night. Her interest was piqued, however, when she heard West’s voice behind her speaking softly to Grady.
Casually turning, she saw that he was no longer bare-chested. But it was not the wrinkled blue shirt he had put back on. He wore a fresh white pullover, the muscles of his chest outlined by the snugly fitting shirt. He stood absently slapping leather reins against his thigh and it dawned on Elizabeth that he was leading a saddled horse. Not his sorrel mare, Lizzie, but one of the Navajo ponies from the remuda they held in reserve as remounts.
Grady was pulling on his flowing white beard and nodding his white head while West did all the talking for a change. When Grady reached out, patted West’s chest, then turned and walked away, Elizabeth’s eyes narrowed. Sure enough, West looped the reins up over the paint’s neck and that was when it struck her fully.